nds. I had a big studio with my brother, and he made huge designs of
the wings the princess used for her skirt, pinning them on the wall of
the studio, then colouring them in the tones of the mummy cases,
allowing for their fading through the ages. These designs we took to
Muelle, who was most enthusiastic. We worked hard and long on that
costume, getting the headdress just right, and making it practical as
well as correct. The jewelry I made myself, from wooden beads painted
the right colour and in the rue de Rivoli I found just the right
Egyptian charms and figures of blue earthenware to hang on the necklace.
My wig maker could not seem to satisfy me, so I finally took a
short-haired black wig, and braided into it one hundred strands, made of
lustreless wool. The dress seemed to lack something when on, so I
twisted ropes of turquoise beads round the wrists and the blue accented
the whole.

The _Dalila_ clothes I had been wearing then seemed hopelessly pale,
washy and conventional, so we hunted the shops of Berlin and Paris for
vivid embroideries and searched museums for Syrian women. They did not
seem at all popular, though we found magnificent reliefs of men. Taking
these as a basis, we built some barbaric robes of scarlet and purple,
added a fuzzy short black wig, and I felt much more "like it." I found a
necklace of silver chains with clumps of turquoise matrix, in Darmstadt,
and had a headdress made to match it. A comparison of the _Amneris_ and
_Dalila_ photos will show how one's sense of costuming develops.

We bought all the books on the subject we could find, and studied them
for hours. We cut out reproductions of historic portraits and invested
largely in photos in the different art galleries we haunted, and pasted
them into scrap books. Caps and headdresses have always interested me
intensely. The one I wear in "Meistersinger" I copied from a portrait in
Antwerp. The Norwegian one I wear as _Mary_ in "Fliegender Hollaender" I
bought in Norway, together with the rest of my costume.

Nothing gives such character to a silhouette as a characteristic head,
and having to do endless old women, I could give them all just as
endless changes of headgear. A comparison of the photos will also show
how one grows into the role with years of playing, and how one's eyes
"come to," how one develops histrionically--how the silhouette acquires
snap and vim and carrying power at a distance, and outlines become crisp
and autho